Next-Gen Mars Rover In Danger of Cancellation 210
OriginalArlen writes "NASA's next-generation rover, the nuclear-powered, laser-equipped Mars Science Laboratory is reported to be at a serious risk of cancellation due to budget and schedule overruns, including non-delivery of vital parts by a subcontractor. Costs are running over $2B so far, and the already thin schedule of Mars missions planned for the next decade — with budget ring-fenced for an outer-planets flagship mission — is in danger of further cuts."
Nuclear Powered? Laser Armed? (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone else thinking that this is just a smokescreen to develop the most awesomest Battlebot ever?
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Anyone else thinking that this is just a smokescreen to develop the most awesomest Battlebot ever?
It could be. That's certainly what the Martians think, which is the real reason it's being canceled. They were okay with us sending a few probes and rovers, but nuclear-powered laser-bots are where they draw the line. So in the name of interplanetary relations the project has to die. Budget overruns is just the cover story, since they can't very well admit that the whole "looking for signs of life" thing is
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I think I'd like to hear the Martian Defense Minister's comments on this story. Haven't heard from him (her? it?) in quite some time.
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It's gonna be hilarious to watch NASA's two billion dollar engine of nuclear laser death get KO'd in five seconds by a $60 ramp on wheels.
iraq war is killing the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iraq war maybe killing NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a few days of Medicare.. (Score:2)
Tell grandma to get a job and pay for her own pills... I want a rover!
Re:iraq war is killing the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
The Iraq war is just a small part of it. We are currently 11 Trillion in debt when you include our bailout of the financial system. I am a fiscal conservative who voted for Bush in 2000, and regretted it by 2002. I believe in a small government, but I also understand that the feds do have important roles to play. Given the option of low taxes and deficits versus higher taxes and a balanced budget I will go balanced all the way.
The fact is the debt costs us every day. The last I check, we spend over $1Billion per day just to finance the debt. That could very well double in the next decade as our credit worthiness goes down, and our debt goes up.
The fact is, no matter how much we earn, we will every satisfy every want that we have. However, when your paycheck goes to debtors, you have to go without more. Space exploration and scientific investment is very important to me... as close to a need as you can get while technically still being a want. However, it must invariably be and has already been curtailed because of our debt.
Iraq will eventually end. Our expenses there will drop. But our debt will hang around our neck like a lead weight. Future generations will have to dig themselves out from under it before investing in the important things, or they will continue to let it balloon as my generation has.
I am truly ashamed that my generation will be the first to leave the country in a worse state than what they received.
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I am truly ashamed that my generation will be the first to leave the country in a worse state than what they received.
I take this to mean you are a baby boomer, and I appreciate that at least some boomers realize that the world will continue to exist after they're gone.
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I am 35. I am a few years younger than the baby boomer generation. However, you can really view the problems that I see from 1965-today, with a recent spiral in the past 15 years. Some might define the dates differently. The fact is, someone has to stand up, take responsibility and do something to correct. Instead of pointing elsewhere, i would rather point the finger in the mirror and say to those around my age that they need to view leadership much differently.
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The Bush Legacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else notice that Bush's term is leaving the US space program without a Space Shuttle or alternative for staffing or servicing the Space Station that we paid more than our share to build, and actually devastating the manned missions to Mars that would keep our lead among our global competitors? Remember when Bush ran for reelection in 2004 promising us a Mars mission, though everyone knew he was "kidding"?
What we'll have left, after Bush's term is done (in which he put Star Wars scientist and CIA venture capitalist Michael Griffin [wikipedia.org] in charge of NASA) is a space program that mainly launches spy satellites and promotes "space supremacy" for the Pentagon and the CIA. Military satellites now used to spy on Americans [arstechnica.com].
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I'm no Bush fan, by any stretch of the imagination. But, in this case, he is HARDLY alone among U.S. presidents. Every president since Nixon has made grandiose promises about all the great stuff NASA is going to do, while continuing to fund it at a *fraction* of the funding they had during the 60's (leaving NASA in a perpetual "do a few cheap things every year, just enough to keep justifing our funding" mode).
Obama will do the same thing. He'll stand at some podium, talk about how NASA is going to the moo
Re:The Bush Legacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Will he? Funny how you extrapolate Obama, a Democrat, from Bush and Nixon, the two most partisan Republicans in history. Despite the records of Kennedy, Johnson, and even financially crippled (by the Nixon/Ford legacy) Carter, and Clinton, too, which show that NASA is a Democratic programme that Republicans lie about and steal from.
I didn't say that Bush was alone. But we can have high expectations of Obama, despite the knowledge (that I'm offering here) that Bush is leaving Obama with a crippled NASA and a devastated budget and economy to fund it from.
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Re:The Bush Legacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Politics aside, Michael Griffin has been in the space business a long time and is a very intelligent person. He also happens to be borderline rabid on Mars. I took a class on space guidance and navigation (basically a graduate level orbital mechanics class) and our part of our final exam was a Mars mission flight. I was long gone from NASA before he took over, so he could be an administrative nightmare, but he does know his stuff.
As for the Bush promise - yeah, but anyone who understood what was necessary knew he was blowing smoke. I put the mars mission at about $2T, based on previous high profile projects; I might have underestimated by a hair, but I don't think I'm too far off. And, of course, you should never trust any project for which the substantial portion of money will be spent _after_ the politician is certain to be out of office.
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Well, that's even worse. Griffin's NASA isn't stymied by lack of know-how, it's lack of can-do. Though not in Griffin's specialty: Star Wars and spacewar, which Griffin has protected with can-do without the know-how.
NASA is failing because of politics, which was of course injected into its science at every step relevant to the hyperpolitical Bush team, of which Griffin was an essential part. We have to be realistic about how to get NASA working again, starting with replacing Griffin and his Pentagon/CIA pri
This is why I'll be voting McCain! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is why I'll be voting McCain! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Bush had a "decent policy on our space program" too, like a manned Mars mission. But, like McCain is on anything else he's saying this campaign season, he's going to continue the Bush policies he voted with over 90% of the time this decade, and just bait & switch us to some Pentagon/CIA boondoggles instead of NASA's space mission.
You're voting for McCain because you're a Republican. You voted for Bush twice, too. It's not rocket science to see that you're a bad decider. Vote McCain if you want to see him "take up space" in the White House the way that Bush did: get in the way without doing anything useful.
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You have got to be the dumbest Anon Coward I've seen. Mod me down, I don't care... but if he honestly thinks McCain is going to spend a dime on space he's insane. No matter WHO wins no money is going to be spent on space, we don't have the spare funds. There are a thousand reasons for and against McCain, but space? Just wow.
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If we had a replacement while retiring the Shuttle, I might agree with you. But instead, like every other Republican programme (that you voted for, twice), the glimmer of sense was just the bait to switch us to a disastrous policy leaving us at the mercy of our foreign competitors.
Without the Shuttle, but with the other boondoggle - the Space Station - still sucking up cash, scientists and management, we're dependent on Russian launches to get us there. Russians who are again among our chief global rivals,
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This time, neither Russia nor China is bogged down fighting the other while we advance ahead of them: we are now in their positions with each other, while they're free to rush forwards, standing on our decades of space leadership.
Who cares? Seriously -- can you give me one good reason why we should care whether other countries have a government-sponsored space program that's ahead of ours? Let them "rush forward" (to what???) and waste their money for awhile.
Meanwhile, the area that we're ahead in that ma
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One good reason is that private financing for space programs will flow to those foreign competitors, and away from us. Another related reason is that if China has an edge it wants to protect from US public funding, its dictatorial stake in our required debt economy will give it the power to further defeat our competing program.
You're simply ignoring the entire history of national space programs, which typically both keep their own efforts secret until unveiled in success, and try to interfere with the compe
Not Surprised. (Score:2)
Odds are that that Congress will send the little thing away. Sad, but not surprising. Politicians are myopic opportunistic creatures that managed to stuff 100 billion of porked, unrelated projects into a 700 billion economic bill. Talk about a lopsided understanding of budgeting.
The government is intent on phasing out the Space Shuttles in favor of the Orion, or, based on its appearance and supposed existence no earlier than two years after the Orbiters stop flying, I call it the Disappearing Pencil Trick.
N
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I call it the Disappearing Pencil Trick.
Hmmm, I wonder where they could shove the Orion stack to make it disappear? I can think of a couple of candidates...
Where the hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Are the pork barrel last minute additions to the $700 billion buyout package for this kind of stuff? NASA doesn't have lobbyists? No congressmen from Florida or Alabama have this kind of pull?
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Not $2B Over (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to clarify, the rover is not $2 billion over budget, which is the impression I got from the summary. It is $500 million over its $1.5 billion budget, and part of that is due to inflation.
If we try to delay the launch, the delay will cost us an extra $300 million. If we cancel the launch, we just spent $2 billion on nothing, and the science it was meant to do remains undone. This shouldn't be a hard decision:
1. Pony up and get this thing launched.
2. Investigate how this happened so we can avoid overruns like this in the future.
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1. Pony up and get this thing launched.
Absolutely.
2. Investigate how this happened so we can avoid overruns like this in the future.
I can give you the results of the investigation right now. Cost estimating billion dollar projects is impossible. Period.
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I hope that we can apply that lesson to future projects. We can create a ranged budget, rather than just picking an optimistic number. We can structure contracts such that contractors and project managers are motivated to keep costs low, but without so much pressure that they cut corners. Budget increases should be examined to determine if they were due to mistakes or legitimate challenge
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We need a new strategy for government spending. Simply picking the "lowest" cost proposal is driving the procurement process into litigation hell.
I am not sure what the answer is, but McCain's philosophy of wanting to get rid of cost plus contracts is definately not the way to go.
No company in their right mind would bid on a 40 billion dollar program.
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Actually you can release some bug fixes. Spirit and Opportunity got a patch enroute.
Otherwise I'm in complete agreement. It's like budgeting a cold fusion project. You're developing something with almost no frame of reference. You know it's going to cost a lot. It might be really easy but there isn't a dealership estimate book to open and say "Oh yeah the dealer's manual says a custom nuclear powered mars rover should take 1,000,000 hours."
Not to late to save it (Score:4, Funny)
Couldn't it just be repurposed to fight terrorists?
Why not more MERs? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Because it is far from certain the next pair will do as well... Because the MER landing system can only handle smooth, low altitude sites - we've been lucky they've survived long enough to cruise into areas they couldn't have landed in.
But mostly because the engineering team that built has been disbanded and moved onto other projects long ago. It would take years to
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Good question. There are several answers.
non-delivery of vital parts by a subcontractor (Score:2)
The US can't do big science (Score:5, Interesting)
The US is in a very bad position with respect to "Big Science". The problem basically is that any congress can't tie the hands of any future congress, and the consequence of this for science is that every single project faces cancellation, every single year. This has led to the cancellation many projects, a prominent example being the Superconducting Supercollider [wikipedia.org].
Science has a much longer-term view than congress. Congress, at most, has a view that lasts 2 years (to the next election), and practically it's much less than that. The US needs to devise a scheme to keep these projects going through hard times, and through fickle congressional actions. A constitutional amendment is unlikely, but how about some creative financing, of the "trust fund" variety? When things run over budget, bring in auditors, fire some people, but at all costs, make sure the science happens.
I'm at CERN, where the funding comes from member states as a fraction of their GDP. As a consequence, CERN has an extremely stable budget compared to US labs. If a project runs over-budget, the lab can simply delay the project. They also have a large permanent staff, so when new ideas come up, they can very quickly move to answer scientific questions, without building entirely new facilities. The expertise already exists here.
Canceling a project has disastrous consequences. Not only do you lose the science that would be gained, you may also lose the scientists, and technology developed along the way. It really is selling out future generations, and sacrificing technological advancement on a long timescale. It's very hard to see what will happen 50 years in the future, but I don't think human colonies on Mars are out of the question, perhaps spurred by the discoveries of the Mars Science Laboratory. Basic research has always paid off in the long run.
The US will lose out on the discoveries that will be made by the LHC. The US could have done it with the SSC a decade ago. How many more times does this have to happen before the US realizes it's a bad idea to cancel projects, and fixes the problem?
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I love it when a plan consists of essentially...
1) Bring in Auditors
2) Fire People
3) ????????
4) As if by magic - Science Happens!
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Right. Let's say a project is $X over budget, and requires $Y to complete - fire half the staff, and you're *still* $X over budget and *still* require $Y (or something close to it) to complete. Absent magic, you still haven't saved any money. In fact its not unlikely that your costs actually _increase_, as reduced staff means a longer time to completion - which means
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Yes, congratulations, you understand that when things are over budget the costs have increased. I never claimed that there was a magic solution to make things cost less. I said completing the science is important, and canceling it causes too much harm.
If the near-term budget is all you care about, then cancel the project. If the economic gains which result from the discoveries, but won't occur for 5-50 years are important, then you damned well better make sure the project is completed, despite the cost
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Are you serious about the american supercolider? It was only proposed because they wanted to show superiority over the Europeans. It's projected cost went from $4 billion up to $12 billion by the time it was cancelled.
The Americans did a very smart thing in cancelling the project and donating money to the LHC instead. Working with the Europeans instead of against.
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I'm to young to really have a full comprehension of the politics at the time...but the cancellation was due to both some financial mismanagement, and competition with the International Space Station, which ran to 100 billion. I hear stories about how biologists were going to their congress-critter's office complaining about how the "proton racetrack" was going to cause them to loose all their funding. It's disgusting that different disciplines have to compete in this way. But if congress decides one day
Overspending (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather over spend a little on a space program than on a war.
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I'd rather over spend a little on a space program than on a war.
That's going to confuse the hell out of the space-war budget.
700 billion (Score:5, Insightful)
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Correction: $500 million cost overrun.
Second Correction: $850 billion bailout plan.
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Well, that's only $350 *illion difference, so it sounds like they're paying most of the bailout with a Mars rover. Sounds reasonable.
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Nuclear energy... (Score:2)
It means something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator [wikipedia.org], right?
That would means the lifespan could be estimated accurately and no surprise is possible. Remember those two rovers were supposed to live only for 90 days due to the power? There is the surprise!
Oh never mind, at this point I realized that the surprise came from under-estimation...NASA, please announce the estimated life time of the next rover in half to keep us surprised.
Priorities, people! (Score:2)
FORGET the $2B (or whatever it is and change) for space exploration and the advancement of the human race... WE NEED TO SAVE WALL STREET!
NASA's budget compared to some other federal progs (Score:5, Informative)
Coincidentally, I threw together this chart yesterday when arguing with a friend about NASA's budget and how space exploration is "a huge government waste".
http://foofus.com/amuse/public/Fedspending-2008-linechart.jpg [foofus.com]
(disclaimer: I do work for NASA).
Most interestingly to me is that if NASA's budget stayed the same, it would take 47 years to spend as much money as the 2008 wall street bailout - which would be the retirement date for a brand-new, young hire.
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Whoops, forgot I'd made a post and was playing with iptables rules.
Reposted here: http://midian.org/~amuse/Fedspending-2008-linechart.jpg [midian.org]
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
"It may be time to put NASA brains on some more immediate problems, like alternative energy, and studying the causes of the continuing decline of every ecosystem on earth. Visiting Mars may be a lot nicer knowing that the astronauts have a habitable planet to return to."
2 comments:
1) Neither alternative energy or biodiversity is in Nasa's purview. we can debate whether it should be the business of the Federal Government at all, but NASA's not the place for it.
2) Per Larry Niven, "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program". If one views the survival of the human species as important, rather than the survival of the ecosystem per se, then having an escape plan is ALWAYS good policy.
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1) Neither alternative energy or biodiversity is in Nasa's purview. we can debate whether it should be the business of the Federal Government at all, but NASA's not the place for it.
Right. Let the free market do for the environment what it's done for the banking industry.
I would be in favor of temporarily suspending the NASA program, utilizing those resources to come up with new energy technology, and then licensing that technology to help fund the resurrected space program.
2) Per Larry Niven, "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program". If one views the survival of the human species as important, rather than the survival of the ecosystem per se, then having an escape plan is ALWAYS good policy.
Strange. I thought the dinosaurs died because they were unable to adapt to a changing environment. Is the sensible solution spending a huge amount of resources trying to invent an environment has an extremely low pr
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Than banking industry is NOT free market, the rent of money is set by the Federal reserve, you need a license to do banking... where do I start ?
Most environmental problems can be traced back to state intervention and lack of property rights. Not all, but most.
As for space colonization, it's the best bet against catastrophic events. Redundant systems are good.
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Yes, but just because it would be good to be able to escape to another planet doesn't mean the universe owes it to us to make it possible. It may *just about* be practical to fly something like the standard NASA reference mission design (and have them live to tell the tale) but the cost will be really big - $200B or so, assuming nothing major goes wrong - and the chances of human colonisation (as in, permanent settlements) on Mars, the moon, or anywhere else is nil, zilch, nada, zero. It's never going to ha
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Deforestation of the Amazon for example is linked to the fact that only temporary lease can be obtained instead of property rights. An owner has an incentive to maintain the property value, a tenant doesn't care.
Similarly overfishing is only a problem due to lack of property rights, replaced by clumsy governmental quota.
Pollution should be recognized as a tort and owners compensated appropriately. In some cases this can be difficult, if anthropogenic global warming is indeed an issue it is very difficult to
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That fishing example you gave. You seem to be saying that removing those quotas will somehow solve overfishing? And that trusting companies that only care about short term profits will work better? Or that letting fishermen who can barely make a living because there is too many of them handle this
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be in favor of temporarily suspending the NASA program, utilizing those resources to come up with new energy technology, and then licensing that technology to help fund the resurrected space program.
Sorry, but this sounds like a classic bad management decision. Take folks off Project A in favor of Project B. Here is the problem... the folks who do Project A might not be the right people for project B. Some will. Some won't. Now, all those smart folks without a job. What do they do? They are smart, they find other jobs. Now, open Project A back up. Those folks just jump at the opportunity to go back to that project, right? If you think so, you know little about human behavior. Those folks will be settled in to a new life, fund a different way of being happy and making a living. You have just lost decades of wisdom and knowledge about a very specialized area of knowledge.
And subcontractors. Think about them. There are a lot of businesses that give NASA what it needs in terms of components. Some, this is their only (or main) job. Some it is a division of a larger corporation. cancel all NASA projects for a while. Now reopen in a decade. You are going to have to rebuild that supply system again. It doesn't happen quickly or cheaply.
Now is research into cleaner energy important? Yes. But don't destroy another system because of it. There are more intelligent ways of going about it.
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, remember, the people at NASA might not have the skillset we need to look at issues like biodiversity and alternate energy. The engineering and aerospace skills the people have may not translate. MBAs might look at people as fungible [wikipedia.org] goods, but the guy who has been doing extensive research into orbital mechanics might not actually know much about things which are applicable.
The problem with that is, if you suspend it, and you ever wanted it back ... there's a huge ramp-up time to get your space program back on line. There's also a lot of stuff that you need a space program for -- we've become highly dependent on communications satellites and the like. You don't want to give up on that.
I think governments (or anyone) should avoid looking at is as "either we invest in space" or "we invest in alternate energies". We should continue to invest in both, because there is a need for both.
If you're really looking to save money, I bet there's an awful lot of defense and other spending you could look at.
Well, as much as it's a fairly glib quote from Niven, it's not really that opposite to what you said.
In a lot of ways, investing in a space program and investing money in basic scientific research can be looked at as trying to learn how you'd adapt to a changing environment. Only, it's what you do when you have opposable thumbs and frontal lobes instead of waiting for evolution to sort it out for you.
Cheers
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Right. Let the free market do for the environment what it's done for the banking industry.
I would be in favor of temporarily suspending the NASA program, utilizing those resources to come up with new energy technology, and then licensing that technology to help fund the resurrected space program.
Well, frankly, it does not matter if we are talking free market or not. Humanity has a horrible record at killing the environment, with to the behavior of corporations and governments being the worst offenders because of the scale.
As for suspending NASA...besides the "bad management decision" reply later in this thread, people seem to forget that all the research that NASA does shows up in other beneficial ways. It shows up in medicine in better diagnostic tools and items like the IEDs which are showing u
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Given the state of the financial system, the ever increasing presence of the government in our lives, and the ever lessening regard citizens have for the wellbeing of their community, that may well be the most insightful typo in the history of Slashdot.
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Alas, it is in the nature of politics that if NASA's budget were "temporarily suspended", it would never be unsuspended. What you're essentially wishing for here is that NASA cease to be, and the USA get out of space travel/exploration.
A changing environment precipitated by a honking big rock falling from the sky.
Note that we're not quite up to diverting a dinosaur killer. But we ought to be capable of doing so within 20 years, if we don't give up on space travel/exploration now.
Which means there's a really good chance we'll never "go the way of the dinosaurs". We may make ourselves extinct in other ways, but we should be immune to falling rocks within my lifetime.
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What you're essentially wishing for here is that NASA cease to be, and the USA get out of space travel/exploration.
You seem to be implying that one thing causes the other. To my mind, the reverse is true - as long as we have NASA [spacefuture.com], we won't get to space travel/exploration.
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I would be in favor of temporarily suspending the NASA program, utilizing those resources to come up with new energy technology, and then licensing that technology to help fund the resurrected space program.
Or just getting rid of a stealth bomber or two, maybe a carrier group.
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"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a
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"We don't need all the people on earth to escape. I think we can safely leave all the lawyers and politicians behind."
My strategy is to divide the populace into 3 categories - the most important, the breeders, and the non-breeders. That's also the priority for launches.
The "most important" category will be filled with those who have the power to influence the system to get themselves rescued - politicians, lawyers, Hollywood types. We load them all onto a ship and launch them first, to prepare society for
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Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times does it have to be repeated...."you never know what kind of benefits this research may bring! It needs to be diverse!"
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, biblical?
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor... real Wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies.
Venkman: Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos.
Winston:The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!
Re:Love space, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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> How many times does it have to be repeated...
By saying this you fall into the trap of justifying space research because it might eventually help children/poor/3rd world nations.
What the hell is the point of having a human race if all it does is breed? Humanity ought to be setting its aims a little higher and actually *do* something worthwhile. We can debate about what specific things are worthwhile, but worthwhile does not mean simply pumping out more babies.
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Well, according to Darwin, it does mean exactly that. "Evolutionarily successful" means having lots of babies grow to breeding age. It doesn't mean "doing something worthwhile"....
All that said, I'm in favour of the human r
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> Well, according to Darwin...
Darwin proposed a theory for how we ended up with the species that we have on Earth. That has nothing to do with what is and isn't worthwhile. You sound like one of those Nazis who judge everything in terms of what is and isn't "good for the species" (which is a gross parody of what Darwin actually said).
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Ah yes, the tiresome old spin-off technology argument. Firstly, LHC is about pure research that will tell us things about the fundamental properties of fields and particles in this world. A manned mission to Mars (which seems to be what you're on about, although TFA has nothing to do with that) would give us some interesting data about Martian geology and, uh, that's it with regard to this one. (OK, some experience with humoungous aerospace engineering and building white elephants.) Secondly, if there was
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It may be time to put NASA brains working for the private sector, following price signals instead of vague planning, and tax dollars back in banks^H^H^H^H^H people's pocket.
I'd love to live and see at least the beginning of terraformation of Mars but I don't see it happening without a business plan.
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You're so adorable, thinking that Americans actually pay for things.
Don't worry! We put it on the credit cards! We don't have to pay for it!
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No thanks, I quite like seeing the results of unmanned space exploration. The business case for doing it is, er, well... oh yeah, there isn't one. If you could scoop up raw diamonds into buckets on the surface of the moon, it still wouldn't be a profit-making proposition.
Sorry, you == epic basic knowledge of the field fail.
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It's a common economic mistake. Many companies which end up very profitable do not make a penny for many years, yet their stock price appreciates with time, providing entrepreneurs with short term return.
The real issue with the number 1000 is not that people expect immediate return, it's rather that all the profits of the enterprise must be discounted by compounding interest over a 1000 years, we're talking 10^-30.
It's not a statement about greedy investors, it's just that us, as human beings, are on averag
Re:Love space, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been major problems on Earth ever since there has been civilization. If we waited to go exploring and discovering until we eliminated war, poverty, crime, and pollution, we would never go anywhere. We'd also miss out on the chance to learn things which could help us to deal with those problems more effectively.
Besides, this is a false dichotomy. We don't need to visit Mars OR save Earth. Earth is more essential, but if we are able we should do both.
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Although I fully agree with almost everything you say, I do think that the current problems are very high indeed. I don't think we've been so close to destroying the earth (as we know it). So if there is a direct budget decision on what to spend money on, I would definitely go for alternative energy and trying to combat overpopulation of this planet.
NASA Already Leading Those Projects (Score:5, Insightful)
The time to start putting NASA brains on alternative energy solutions, and studying the causes of global ecosystem decline was in the 1960s.
Good thing we did just that. Fuelcells, solar PV, and pushing mechanical efficiencies to their theoretical limits has been among the best Return on Investment from our NASA budgets ever since the Apollo Program. Global ecology might not even exist without NASA satellites both inspiring the public and gushing data to scientists. Innovation in energy engineering and ecology science has been falling back to Earth for about as long as NASA has been lauching devices off of it.
In fact, the R&D for visiting Mars has lots of "dual use" in delivering "survival tech" here on Earth long before we ever get to Mars. And of course the systems on Mars will need efficiencies and exploitation systems that will work here on Earth, Mars' sister planet. Plus, studying Mars' "parallel evolution" more directly, especially after its climate has evidently catastrophically changed from one more like ours today, is an unequaled opportunity to study what looks like our possible future, without either waiting or having to guess.
These are the main reasons to love space, and NASA's exploration of it. Because Earth is in space, too. What NASA teaches us about space, we learn about ourself. And since NASA primarily teaches us about machines for living in space with extremely limited resources, while we push ours at home to the brink, we need more of exactly what NASA has already given us now more than ever.
We love space because it is there. (Score:2)
There's no need to rationalize NASA. You can't calculate an economic return for it any more than you can calculate the return of a brilliant song, but we sense that those are needed to enrich the human spirit. There are some challenges that great nations must undertake to further the human condition and understanding, like, as the Egyptians built massive monuments, so too the USA must lead the charge into space. When NASA sends back pictures of far away places, when Americans plant a flag on the moon, al
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News Flash (Score:2)
All energy is "alternative."
If you're trying to say we need to use something other than gasoline to drive, I agree.
But every erg of energy we have comes from the sun, directly or indirectly. Natural gas comes mostly from coal fields, for example. Sailing to work is not likely to happen, sadly.
Not all of it is portable and/or desirable, such as having a small fission reactor in your car. It's there, however.
As are billions of gallons of oil sitting for the taking in a few pieces of tundra.
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But every erg of energy we have comes from the sun, directly or indirectly.
Nitpick: nope, not from the sun, not even indirectly. Deep geothermal energy (created mostly by radioactive decay, but also partly by gravitational energy of the Earth-Moon system) and fission energy and (some day hopefully) fusion energy don't come from the sun. Our first fusion energy comes directly from the hydrogen that formed in the Big Bang, while energy of fission and radioactive decay come from ancient supernovas. Also eventually we may also use heavier elements for fusion (such as Boron [wikipedia.org]), which wer
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Fission reactions rely on heavy metals which were formed in fusion reactions of ancient stars.
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It may be time to put NASA brains on some more immediate problems...
You're assuming that:
1. There aren't already lots of brains at work on these problems, and
2. Throwing more brains at the problems will solve them significantly faster.
Also keep in mind that you could pull all of the smart brains at NASA, Intel, Google, Pixar and a thousand other groups to work exclusively on the immediate problems of the day, only to find out that the problems they are no longer working on were a lot more important than you
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That should be a Democratic Argument (Score:2)
I think that, now that government intervention in the economy is now on the table as a policy instrument, that's a good argument for Democrats to make. Let them be the party that wants to curtail forward looking science missions and exploration in favor of more short term social priorities.
On the other hand, let's have Republicans that instead of putting all of the science into the hands of the marketplace, recognize that government spending on the sciences and on technological infrastructure and educatio
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Now China does that.
Really long extension cords (Score:2)
Yeah, 'cause an agency that sends electrically powered devices millions of miles from the nearest electrical grid has probably never done any research on alternative energy. They just use really, really long extension cords.
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FYI - they're doing just that, NASA actually works on more than one thing at a time.
And if things really do get to the point that earth is uninhabitable, it'd be a lot nicer knowing that everyone else has a place to go.
The "war" in Iraq, along with othe "police actions" around the world, cost orders of magnitude more than NASA's entire budget, whi
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